This sweep­ing fam­i­ly saga spans from the tur­moil of Atlanta dur­ing the Civ­il Rights Move­ment through the strug­gle for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in post-geno­cide Rwan­da. At the heart of this sto­ry that cross­es racial and cul­tur­al bound­aries is the search for per­son­al peace and tikkun olam.

Lil­lian Carl­son left Atlanta in 1967, dis­il­lu­sioned and heart­bro­ken, after the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King. She found mean­ing teach­ing orphaned chil­dren and cob­bled togeth­er a small orphan­age in the shad­ow of Rwan­da’s Virun­ga Moun­tains. Three decades lat­er, in Man­hat­tan, Rachel Shep­herd, lost and heart­bro­ken her­self, wants to find the father who aban­doned her as a child. When an online search turns up a clue to Hen­ry Shep­herd’s where­abouts, Rachel trav­els to Rwan­da to con­nect with his unsus­pect­ing and unco­op­er­a­tive sec­ond wife: Lillian.

While Rachel tries to solve the mys­tery of her father’s where­abouts, she and Lil­lian find com­mon ground help­ing Nadine, a young Tut­si woman who must face the hor­rors of her past. Set amongst the still-ten­der wounds of a heal­ing coun­try, fol­low the inter­twin­ing sto­ries of three women who dis­cov­er some­thing unex­pect­ed: grace when there can be no forgiveness.